Smith Willas is a freelance writer, blogger, and digital media journalist. He has a management degree in Supply Chain & Operations Management and Marketing and boasts a wide-ranging background in digital media.

Marketing, especially digital marketing can be a roller coaster of shifting best practices, consumer behaviors, and guidelines.

For example, in May 2018, a new European privacy regulation called GDPR was enforced that can profoundly change businesses in terms of collection, storage, and usage of customer data. Deloitte found that only 15% of organizations expected to be compliant with these new privacy regulations by the May deadline, which means it’s something many marketers are still dealing with. And given that 57% of B2B marketers think personalization is a key trend for the next year, changes to tracking and data storage can have a huge impact.

We’re also emphasizing different phases of the funnel than we used to. ClickZ’s B2B marketing survey found that more marketers are moving their attention away from audience building and lead generation at the top of the funnel to nurturing and converting those. While 45% of respondents said growing traffic was a priority, 50% are now demanding leads that are fed into the middle and bottom. It’s a stark difference from the top-of-funnel focus in so many conversions in years prior.